Had an interesting conversation with a guy whose family have a long and extreme republican history yesterday. His whole family, including himself, have been Shinners all their lives, and I was interested in his views on SFs performance and it’s implications. He’s a highly intelligent and genuinely likable guy in his early 30s (and believe me I have tried hard to dislike him) despite his political beliefs, and he was surprisingly frank in his views.

From what he said SF is riven with internal divisions, with the old guard viewing the newcomers of the past few years with a mixture of suspicion and disdain, and basically knocking every new idea on the head in their attempts to cling to power within the party, and keep it doctrinally pure. its this which has led to the well founded allegations of bullying.

He himself, despite his longstanding family involvement, seems to have aligned himself with the new guard, and has reduced his involvement significantly, and he says he’s not alone. He also suggested as circumspectly as he could that Mary Lou is a dead woman walking, and that her future is the main topic of discussion when he meets people from either side of the party, and had been well before their election disasters. If, as was suggested above, Carthy, one of their most capable performers, loses his seat I think she will be out the door tout suite.

Had an interesting conversation with a guy whose family have a long and extreme republican history yesterday. His whole family, including himself, have been Shinners all their lives, and I was interested in his views on SFs performance and it’s implications. He’s a highly intelligent and genuinely likable guy in his early 30s (and believe me I have tried hard to dislike him) despite his political beliefs, and he was surprisingly frank in his views.

From what he said SF is riven with internal divisions, with the old guard viewing the newcomers of the past few years with a mixture of suspicion and disdain, and basically knocking every new idea on the head in their attempts to cling to power within the party, and keep it doctrinally pure. its this which has led to the well founded allegations of bullying.

He himself, despite his longstanding family involvement, seems to have aligned himself with the new guard, and has reduced his involvement significantly, and he says he’s not alone. He also suggested as circumspectly as he could that Mary Lou is a dead woman walking, and that her future is the main topic of discussion when he meets people from either side of the party, and had been well before their election disasters. If, as was suggested above, Carthy, one of their most capable performers, loses his seat I think she will be out the door tout suite.

Hopefully the cnuts tear themselves apart.

Also a lot of their candidates have performed piss-poorly in office or are complete spoofers, such as one of their Cavan candidates who used to be a drinking buddy of mine 15 years ago.

Another point against SF in the Border areas at least was them telling their Northern voters to give their 2nd preferences to Long over Eastwood. Left a very sour taste in the mouth of a lot of soft SF and swing voters.

SF have lost 36% of their seats in the Border counties so far. May go even higher once the final Donegal result comes in.

Is there any chance this is related to them being absent on brexit, in the south too but, mainly in the borders.

There has been a mixture of different factors; poor performance in office, Brexit, internal divisions, identity politics bollocks turning off the rural conservative base, the Aontú split, FF making a massive boots on the ground push to take back the voters they lost to them in the recession, lack of coherent policies beyond the usual "professional protester" nonsense in an improving economy. It's the worst of all worlds for SF because there is no one factor that accounts for the decline thus the problem is intractable and very difficult to solve. The presidential election result was widely assumed to be a blip but it's actually turned out to be an indicator; SF peaked in 2014 and they are returning back to their natural electoral ceiling.

In the Netherlands they give you debts to debt collection agencies who harass the fup out of you till you pay or else they confiscate your stuff. Also if you show up at Schipol with unpaid fines the police will walk you to the ATM to get the cash or else they refuse to let you fly. My old boss here once got done for 2k worth of speeding fines (they double and triple if you don't pay), had to pay up on the spot in Schipol. Here people pay their bills